Thailand Birding: Sri Nakorn Kuan Kan - More Migrants

With migration still underway I decided that another trip to Sri Nakorn Kuan Kan park was in order, particularly considering it is not far from where I live. I arrived a little too early, just before 6am, and found myself having to wait a little while for it to become light enough for birding.

By 6.15am, though, birds were active and close to the park gate I found the first of many passage migrants; 2 Eyebrowed Thrushes. I decided to get myself up the birdwatching tower early but on my way I got distracted by the many Pink-necked Green Pigeons that are always to be found in the park.

Pink-necked Green Pigeon

The top of the tower gives a good view over parts of the park and in half an hour I saw more migrant birds moving through and perched in trees; 2 Black-naped Orioles, 1 Crow-billed Drongo, 3 more Eyebrowed Thrushes, 3 Ashy Minivets, 1 male Japanese Sparrowhawk and 2 Dollarbirds.

When the activity started to die down I moved on to an area that always seems to attract birds and after a slow start I saw a singing Arctic Warbler, an Asian Brown Flycatcher and a male Green-backed Flycatcher. I have only ever seen the female of this rare bird before and interestingly that observation was in the same park almost exactly 2 years ago. I watched this bird for some time, failing to get even poor photos of it, before it was chased off by a male Yellow-rumped Flycatcher. A flock of 8 Ashy Minivets then showed up and a Black-winged Cuckooshrike gave itself away with its song, being joined by a second bird to feed with the minivets.

I decided to walk through some of the overgrown, swampy areas to see if any Black Bitterns had arrived and I had not walked more than 5 metres before flushing one into a tree.

I moved to another area with some trees that are always full of insects to see if that had anything different in store for me and this turned out to be one of the best spots in the park and I visited it three times finding 3 Asian Brown Flycatchers, 1 male and 2 female Yellow-rumped Flycatchers, 1 Drongo Cuckoo, 1 more Crow-billed Drongo, 1 Forest Wagtail, 1 female Black-winged Cuckooshrike, 5 Ashy Minivets and a female Mugimaki Flycatcher.

Between 8am and 9am things got a bit quiet but by hanging around I came across a second period of activity adding Shikra, another Forest Wagtail, Radde's Warbler, Pale-legged Leaf Warbler and another female Yellow-rumped Flycatcher to the migrant total; oh, and it is easy to forget that Chinese Pond Heron is a migrant too.

Chinese Pond Heron

I should also add that Sri Nakorn Kuan Kan park always has a few interesting resident species and Greater Racket-tailed Drongo, Vinous-breasted Starling, Stork-billed Kingfisher, Green-billed Malkoha and a pair of Laced Woodpeckers all showed themselves.

One final effort to see if any new migrants had arrived turned up a nice Indian Cuckoo which posed for a while - the first of the year for me - and the first Ashy Drongo of the morning, plus more Ashy Minivets, Asian Brown Flycatchers and several more Eyebrowed Thrushes flying overhead.

Indian Cuckoo

A pretty good morning of birding in the park!